The Epistle to Barnabas Affirming Jesus Being Killed on a T-Shaped Cross, not a Torture Stake

In the Epistle to Barnabas (written between 70-132), we have an early affirmation of Jesus having been crucified, not on a torture stake, but a T-shaped cross:

 

For it says, "And Abraham circumcised from his household eighteen men and three hundred." What then was the knowledge that was given to him? Notice that he first mentions the eighteen, and after a pause the three hundred. The eighteen is I (= ten) and H (= 8)—you have Jesus—and because the cross was destined to have grace in the T he says "and three hundred." So he indicates Jesus in the two letters and the cross in the other. (Epistle to Barnabas, 9:8 [Kirsopp Lake])

 

While one can call into question the purported Old Testament typological evidence the author of this text points to, it does show that he labours under the a priori assumption that Jesus was crucified on a T-shaped cross, not a torture stake, contra Jehovah’s Witnesses who often dogmatically claim that σταυρὸς only means “torture stake.” Further evidence against the "torture stake" rendering of σταυρος can be seen in the use of plural nails, not the singular nail in John 20:25. On this, see:

Jehovah's Witnesses, the nature of Jesus' execution, and John 20:25

G. Walter Hansen on "The Form of God" in Philippians 2:6 as "The Glory of God"

Commenting on “the form of God” (μορφῇ θεοῦ) is “the Glory of God,” G. Walter Hansen notes:

 

A number of interpreters have defined the meaning of the form of God by referring to numerous references in the OT that indicate that the glory of God is the outward appearance of the presence and majesty of God:

 

“There was the glory of the LORD appearing in the cloud” (Exod 16:10).

“The glory of the LORD settled on Mount Sinai” (Exod 24:16).

“Moses said, ‘Now show me your glory’” (Exod 33:18).

“Then the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the LORD filled the tabernacle” (Exod 40:34).

“Moses said, ‘This is what the LORD has commanded you to do, so that the glory of the LORD may appear to you’” (Lev 9:6).

“And the glory of the LORD appeared to all the people” (Lev 9:21).

“The priests could not perform their service because of the cloud, for the glory of the LORD filled his temple” (1 Kings 8:11).

“The heavens declare the glory of God” (Ps 24:1).

“’Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory’” (Isa 6:3)

“’Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the LORD rises upon you’” (Isa 60:1-2).

“Like the appearance of a rainbow in the clouds on a rainy day, so was the radiance around him. This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the LORD” (Ezek 1:28).

“I saw the glory of the God of Israel coming from the east, . . . and the land was radiant with his glory” (Ezek 43:2).

“I looked and saw the glory of the LORD filling the temple of the Lord” (Ezek 44:4).

 

The glory of God dramatically overpowers people by filling the tabernacle, the temple, the land, the whole earth, and the heavens with radiant, transcendent light.

 

Paul develops his argument in Romans 1 from this perspective that the glory of God is the outward appearance of God’s power and majesty. Paul critiques those who have suppressed the truth: “They . . . exchanged the glory of the immortal God or images” (Rom 1:23). He baes his accusation on the premise that “since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse” (Rom 1:20). This revelation of God in creation is the glory of God when he encountered Christ: “For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of the darkness,’ made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ” (2 Cor 4:6).

 

This evidence that both the OT and NT speak of the glory of God as the manifestation of God supports the definition of the form of God as the glory of God. The form of God in which the preincarnate Christ was clothed was the glory of God. (G. Walter Hansen, The Letters to the Philippians [The Pillar New Testament Commentary; Nottingham: Apollos, 2009], 136-37)

 

Interacting with Gordon Fee’s Pauline Christology, Hansen writes:

 

Fee (205) rejects the definition of the form of God as “the glory of God.” He points to the parallelism of the phrases, the form of God and the form of a slave, and notes that it is impossible to apply glory to the role of the slave. But this criticism misses the antithetical nature of the parallelism. The hymn draws a contrast between the form of God and the form of a slave. The word form means outward appearance in both cases. But the form of God is glory; the form of a slave is humiliation. (Ibid., 137 n. 130)

 

 

The Human Element in the Inspiration and Inscripturation of Revelation

Commenting on how Scripture is not human merely or divine merely¸ but both, Dummelow wrote:

 

The Human Element. This can be recognised (a) in the cooperation of human minds with the mind of the Holy Ghost. The Psalmist who unburdened his soul in Ps 51 must have been deeply conscious that he was himself imploring forgiveness, and like other humble saints may have been scarcely aware that the Divine Spirit was prompting his prayer. In the same way the prophets were perhaps often unaware of the full divine meaning which God intended heir words to bear ultimately. When the Psalmist says, ‘They pierced my hands and my feet’ and when Hosea says, ‘When Israel was a child then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt,’ we need not suppose that they were at all conscious that their words would correspond with the experiences of the Messiah.

 

The human element can be recognised (b) in the materials employed by the sacred writers, and in the manner in which they are combined. The writers used various sources of information as modern writers do. Thus in Nu 21¹⁴ we find a reference to a ‘Book of the Wars of the Lord,’ and in Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles several documents are quoted. Even in the New Testament the writers felt at liberty to rearrange or modify earlier inspired writings felt at liberty to rearrange or modify earlier inspired writings, for St. Luke and St. Matthew both appear to have absorbed much of St. Mark’s Gospel, and St. Luke has endeavoured to make the Greek more elegant. (J.R. Dummelow, A Commentary on the Holy Bible [London: Macmillan and Co., 1909], cxxii)

 

Elsewhere we read:

 

THE DIVINE AND HUMAN IN THE BIBLE

 

There are two answers. First, that in the Bible and divine and human are blended . . . We must not regard the Bible as an absolutely perfect book in which God is Himself the author using human hands and brains only as a man might use a typewriter. God used men, not machines—men with like weakness and prejudice and passion as ourselves, though purified and ennobled by the influence of His Holy Spirit; men each with his own peculiarities of manner and disposition—each with his own education or want of education—each with his own way of looking at things—each influenced differently from another by the different experiences and disciple of his life. Their inspiration did not involve a suspension of their natural faculties; it did not destroy their personality, nor abolish the differences of training and character; it did not even make them perfectly free from earthly passion; it did not make them into machines—it left them men.

 

Therefore we find their knowledge sometimes no higher than that of their contemporaries, and their indignation against oppression and wrong-doing sometimes breaking out into desire of revenge. This would not surprise us in the least in other good men who were we knew striving after God and righteousness. It surprises us in the Bible, because of our false preconceptions; because it is in the Bible we do not expect the actors to be real and natural; because of our false theory of Verbal Inspiration we are puzzled when the divine is mingled with the human. We must learn that the divine is mingled with the human.

 

We cannot draw a line between the divine and the human. We cannot say of any part, ‘This is divine,’ or ‘This is human.’ In some parts, as the Gospels, there is more of the divine; in others, as the Chronicles, more of the human. It is as a mine of precious ore where the gold is mingled with the rock and clay—the ore is richer in one part than another, but all parts in some degree are glittering with gold. It is as sunlight through a painted window—the light must come to us coloured by the medium—we cannot get in any other way. In some parts the medium is denser and more imperfect, in others the golden glory comes dazzlingly through. It is foolish to ignore the existence of the human medium through which the light has come; it is still more foolish to ignore the divine light, and think that the tinted dome is luminous itself, that the light of heaven has only come from earth. Both must be kept in mind—the divine and the human—if the Bible is to be rightly understood. (Ibid., cxxxiv-cxxv)

 

For a modern scholarly discussion of the “Incarnational” model of biblical inspiration, see:

 

Peter Enns, Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament

Coping with Ethnicity in Pharaonic Egypt

In the following article, the author, Juan Carlos Moreno García, discusses how Egyptians struggled with ethnicity in a way that is similar to what we find in the Old Testament and even the Book of Mormon:

Coping with Ethnicity in Pharaonic Egypt

(my thanks to my friend Stephen Smoot for making me aware of this article)

Psalm 110:4 and the (Human) Davidic Kings being Priests After the Order of Melchizedek

Commenting on Psa 110:4 and the phrase, “you are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek,” J.R. Dummelow, a Protestant, affirmed that it was not written with only the eschatological Messiah in view, but also the (human) Davidic Kings:

 

The king is to be priest as well. This might be true of a Davidic prince: cp. 2 S[am]6¹⁴, or of Simon Maccabaeus, cp. 1 Mac 10²¹. But it is ultimately most certainly Messianic: cp. Zech 6^11-13. ‘After the manner (RM) of Melchizedek,’ who was king and priest in Salem, i.e. Jerusalem: cp. Gn14¹⁸. (J.R. Dummelow, A Commentary on the Holy Bible [London: Macmillan and Co., 1909], 371)

 

This flies in the face of the naïve interpretation of Psa 110:4 by some Protestants that this psalm was only about the then-future Messiah (i.e., Jesus), and was never applied to the human Davidic King. This also blows holes into the naïve misreading of Heb 7:24-25 that only Jesus ever held the Melchizedek Priesthood.

 

Indeed, note the following about the Davidic Kings being priests after, not the priesthood of Levi, but Melchizedek, from a modern biblical scholar:

The Cultic Role of David

The sacral character of the ancient Near Eastern monarch manifested itself in the priestly function of the king. As Keel observes:

Throughout the entire ancient Near East, but especially in ancient Sumer, cultic responsibilities devolve upon the king. The ancient Sumerian Ensi was as much priest as prince. He resides in the temple and is responsible for the welfare of the city god . . . As late as the Neo-Sumerian period, Ur-Nammu appears not only as temple builder but also in a priestly capacity. Iconographic evidence for the priestly functions of Mesopotamian kings are extant well into the latest Assyrian epoch. (O. Keel, The Symbolism of the Biblical World, pp. 278-79)

The reference to king as כהן in Ps. 110.4 testifies to the survival of this aspect of kingship in Israel, even though the priestly nature of Israelite kingship remain ambiguous in some Old Testament texts. (William Riley, King and Cultus in Chronicles: Worship and the Reinterpretation of History [JSOT 160; Sheffield: Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Press, 1993], 58)

In a footnote commenting on certain texts that seem, at first reading, to be ambiguous as to whether it is proper for a Davidic king to also serve as a priest, Riley noted:

Indeed, passages such as 1 Sam. 13.8-14 and 2 Chron. 26:16-20 seem to condemn kings who take it upon themselves to exercise a priestly function. However, the biblical author may not have placed the emphasis in 1 Sam. 13.8-14 on the cultic action as it appears at first place. Cultic activity was not incompatible with military or tribal leadership in pre-monarchial Israel, as can be seen from Jud. 6.24-26 or from the figure of Samuel himself. H.W. Hertzberg, I & II Samuel, p. 106, interprets the sin of Saul as having no patience and allowing ‘the disturbing situation to be the most important factor in his decision’. Such an interpretation, which takes the emphasis from the cultic nature of Saul’s impatient action, also resonates with the demand of the holy war that fear be excluded since the nation depends utterly on the victorious presence of Yahweh (cf. Deut. 20.3-4, 8). Similarly, it is possible that the condemnation of Uzziah’s action in 2 Chron. 26.16-20 may not be a statement against the priestly nature of kingship so much as the delineation of a priestly action not permitted to kings in the later Priestly legal tradition (Exod. 30.7-10; Num. 16.40); cf. Rudolph, Chronikbücher, p. 286; J. Becker, 2 Chronik, p. 87. The Chronicler might even here be addressing a specific cultic problem of the illicit offering of incense, given the large number of incense altars excavated from Persian period Palestine (including over two hundred at Lachish alone); cf. A. Rolla, ‘La Palestina Postesilica alla luce dell’archeologia’ pp. 117-18. (Ibid., 58-59, n. 5)

 

For more on Psa 110:4, Heb 7:24-25, and other key texts, see my book:

 

After the Order of the Son of God: The Biblical and Historical Evidence for Latter-day Saint Theology of the Priesthood

J.R. Dummelow’s Affirmation of Baptismal Regeneration

In some of the key texts relating to baptismal regeneration, J.R. Dummelow, in his A Commentary on the Holy Bible (London: Macmillan and Co., 1909) affirmed that water baptism is the instrumental means of regeneration (not the mere act of baptism, but the Holy Spirit working through the instrumental meanings of water baptism—I say this as many have a caricature-like understanding of this doctrine). Note the following:

 

John 3:3-5

 

5. Of water and of the Spirit] Our Lord again insists that a new birth is necessary, and explains that it must be an inward and spiritual one. It must not be only of ‘water,’ i.e. the reception of the outward rite o baptism without proper appreciation for what membership of Christ’s Kingdom involves, but also of ‘the Spirit,’ i.e. Nicodemus must approach Christ’s baptism with such sincerity of repentance and faith, and such earnest resolution to live up to the ideals of the new Kingdom, that in his case the outward rite will be accompanied by an effusion of the Spirit, that will make his baptism a real ‘new birth of water and of the Spirit.’

 

Baptism is again spoken of as a ‘new birth’ by St. Paul—‘according to his mercy he saved us by (RV ‘through’) the washing (RM ‘laver,’ i.e. bath) of regeneration (or ‘new birth’) and renewing of the Holy Ghost’ (Tit 3⁵). (p. 779)

 

Elsewhere, Dummelow affirms that, in John 3:3-5, Jesus associates “new birth” with baptism:

 

The phrase ‘new birth’ or ‘regeneration’ here applied by our Lord to Christian baptism was not a new one. (Ibid., 779)

 

Acts 2:38

 

The remission of sins] one of the principal benefits of Holy Baptism, when the ordinance is rightly received (22¹⁶; cp. 10^{46, 47} 13³⁸ Heb 10²²; also 1 Cor 6¹¹ Eph 5^{25, 26}). (pp. 821-22)

 

Gal 3:27

 

27. Baptized into Christ] entered by baptism into the relation of fellowship with Christ. The argument is: Baptism means union with Christ, and union with Christ means the liberty of sonship to God. (p. 952)

 

Eph 5:26

 

26. Washing of water] Christian baptism, with perhaps a reference to the bride’s bath before marriage. By the word] RV ‘with the word,’ to be taken with ‘the washing of water’ and meaning the baptismal formula. (p. 965)

 

Titus 3:5

 

5. By the washing of regeneration] For ‘washing,’ ‘laver’ (i.e. place where the washing took place) is better. Baptism is referred to here. Renewing of the Holy Ghost’ The baptism to be efficient must be both by water and by the Spirit. It is not a mere outward act. (p. 1008)

 

Further Reading

Refuting Douglas Wilson on Water Baptism and Salvation

Baptism, Salvation, and the New Testament: John 3:1-7

Christ's baptism is NOT imputed to the believer

Everett Ferguson, Baptism in the Early Church: History, Theology, and Liturgy in the First Five Centuries

G. Walter Hansen on the Carmen Christi (Philippians 2:6-11) Teaching the Personal Pre-Existence of Jesus

In his translation of Phil 2:6-11 (the “Carmen Christi”), Thomas Wayment renders the text thusly (I will admit, I really like his translation, such as rendering αρπαγμος in v. 6 as "seized"):

 

Who was in the form of God,
did not suppose that equality with God
was a prize to be seized,
but he poured himself out
and took the form of a slave,
and he was born like human beings.
And he was found in human form;
he humbled himself
and was obedient to the point of death:
death on the cross.
Therefore, God exalted him on high
and freely bestowed on him the name
that is above every name
so that in the name of Jesus
every knee should bend in worship
in the heavens, on earth,
and among those who dwell beneath
the earth
and every tongue will confess
the Lord Jesus Christ,
to the glory of God the Father.

 

Some argue that the hymn in Phil 2:6-11 does not teach the personal pre-existence of Jesus; instead, it is teaching only an “Adam Christology” (i.e., Jesus as the new Adam) and focuses only upon his human existence (e.g., James Dunn, Christology in the Making is a leading advocate of this view). To be sure, there are parallels between Adam and Christ in this hymn. G. Walter Hansen presents this table with some of the parallels in this hymn:

 

Christ	Adam
Existing in the form of God	created in the image of God
Did not grasp equality with God	tempted to be like God
Took the form of a slave	enslaved to sin
Obedient to death	death after disobedience

 

Notwithstanding, the hymn, if there is an Adam Christology, is not teaching only a (New) Adam Christology. Furthermore, emptying the hymn of the personal (not merely ideal) pre-existence of Jesus flies in the face of the theology of the hymn, as many things are said that make no sense of Paul was not teaching Jesus’ personal existence in heaven before taking on the form of man:

 

The parallels drawn between Christ and Adam lead some to assert that the hymn does not make any reference to a preincarnate, personal pre-existence of Christ. Here is Dunn’s logic: Since the narratives of Adam and Christ are parallel and since “Adam was certainly not thought of as pre-existent,” therefore, “no implication that Christ was pre-existent may be intended” (Dunn, Christology on the Making, 119). Brown concludes that the phrase in the form of God refers to “one whose earthly life was a manifestation of God” (Brown, “Ernest Lohmeyer’s Kyrios Jesus,” 27). In this interpretation of the hymn, the hymn presents Christ’s narrative against the backdrop of Adam’s narrative. As human beings bearing the image of God, Adam and Christ made very different choices: Adam succumbed to the temptation to be like God (Gen 3:5), but Christ did not consider equality with God something to be grasped (Phil 2:6). Instead of grasping for equality with God, Christ “freely embraced the outcome which Ada’s grasping and disobedience brought upon humankind. He freely embraced the lot of humankind as a slave to sin and death, which was the consequence of Adam’s grasping” (Dunn, The Theology of Paul the Apostle, 287-88). Dunn stresses that the hymn draws these parallels between Christ and Adam in order to focus on the choices that they both made and the consequences of their choices. According to him, questions about the historicity of Adam or the preexistence of Christ are not addressed by the hymn (Dunn, Christology in the Making, 120).

 

When the parallels between Christ and Adam are pressed to the point of denying any reference in the hymn to the preexistence of Christ, the narrative of the hymn is neglected and lost. The narrative in the hymn collapses when the story is retold to depict the choice of Christ as the choice of a human being who emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, becoming in the likeness of human beings. The hymn emphasizes the decision to become a human being by adding the phrase, and being formed in appearance of a human being. If the first line—the one existing in the form of God—portrays the choice of one who is already a human being without any reference to his pre-human existence, then the subsequent lines in the narrative—becoming in the likeness of human beings and being found in the appearance as a human being (2:7, 8) are strangely redundant. What is the point of saying that a human being chose to become a human being and was found in appearance as a human being? But these repeated references to being made and found in human likeness are hugely significant if they depict the consequences of the choice of the one existing in the form of God before he became a human being. (G. Walter Hansen, The Letters to the Philippians [The Pillar New Testament Commentary; Nottingham: Apollos, 2009], 140-41, emphasis in bold added)

 

In a footnote to the above, Hansen quotes Martin, A Hymn to Christ, xxi to the effect that:

 

The hymn’s thought cannot start from Adam of Genesis but must go behind that Adam to Him who was the archetype of Adam. Only on this basis can the symmetry be established, and any real meaning given to the choice of Christ (in verse 6) which brought Him into the stream of humanity. (Ibid., 141 n. 150)

 

Phil 2:6-11 is a strong exegetical witness to the personal, not merely ideal, pre-existence of Jesus.